adminVeronica Gwaze
Sports Reporter
UNIVERSITY of Zimbabwe Wolves and Harare City men’s volleyball teams are not leaving any-thing to chance and have resumed preparations for this year’s African Club Championships slat-ed for Tunisia early this year.
Wolves are already in the second week of camp, while the Citizens are set to resume next week after a month-long break.
The two booked their spots for the African showcase after UZ finished tops, while City settled for silver at the Zone Six games in Lilongwe last year.
Interestingly, the powerhouses’ head coaches – UZ Wolves’ Chekuda Makuyana and City’s Itsanang Abu-Basutu – have been friends since childhood.
When it comes to volleyball, they speak with a unified voice.
The duo rose through the ranks together and, at some point, played for the same team.
“We are now back from the holiday break, having started our preparations some three weeks ago ahead of the upcoming CAVB Club championships in Tunisia,” said Makuyana.
“Our training is now in full swing and the boys are pumped up.
“The spirits are still high after bringing home gold from Malawi. That will be our major drive.
“There is a strong positive mood in camp, the team is geared up and we hope to improve on some of the weaknesses we noted during the Zone VI competition in Malawi.”
Makuyana said Tafadzwa Mudonha and Ronald Makombe are yet to join camp while the rest of team is currently working on physical fitness, endurance and speed.
“So far I am happy with the progress, everyone is focused and raring to go.
“After working on physique and our endurance next week, we will take it a gear up and focus on more complex drills, especially defence and blocking,” Makuyana said.
After falling out at the group stages of the club championships last year, Makuyana is now target-ing a top-four finish.
It therefore comes as no suprise that his counterpart Abu-Basutu has similar aspirations.
To ease his woes, his paymasters have spared no expenses in bringing in new players ahead of resumption of camp later this week.
“In Malawi, we picked a few areas that need fine tuning. As we start training, defence and service reception are some of the key areas we will focus on.
“We also fell to attacking errors in Malawi, actually the last crucial points that could have earned us gold were lost to offensive blunders, so we need to iron that area out,” said Abu-Basutu.
Exposure and intense competition will also be key.
The Citizens have lined up a series of friendly matches with both local and foreign clubs.
“This level of competition will not be easy. In fact, it will be tough and very challenging, so we need to work up to a certain standard.
“Resources permitting, we will have as many friendly matches as we can,” Abu Basutu said.
Tinaye Agere
Online Reporter